There are so many things I like about it, traditional, natural, comparatively low materials cost, and repairability. Crack you nitro finish and you can be looking at refinishing from scratch.

Either will do.

As the 'con-man' said while being interviewed on the radio today:

"Nobody buys a drill because they want a drill... they buy a drill because they want a hole".

Agreed. And the odor and vapors of denatured alcohol is much more user friendly than lacquer thinner or spirits. I use shellac exclusively on my small furniture pieces and I find David's post regarding finishing stringed instruments with shellac very interesting. I've never heard of that before. I can imagine getting the "build" enough for a ukulele or guitar must be very time consuming.

I love this. I'm sure I'll be quoting this guy.

Maybe for the first drill, after that, you just want a newer, fancier, drill.

i'm not a vegan, but creating shellac is a horrible process.

Approximately 300,000 lac insects are killed to produce 1kg of lac.
Lac is made up of 25% insect debris.
Annual production of lac is estimated at 20,000 tonnes globally.

http://www.vegansociety.com/resource...s/shellac.aspx

it is used a lot in makeup and several of your favorite candies.

A man said this?! I mean, yes, I buy tools to achieve a job... But I also just want the tools.

Nooooo are you serious?! Well how do we quantify this? In terms of insect lives lost? Carbon output? How does this compare to the synthetics production in lacquer or polyurethane/varnish (do these even decompose?). If I had to choose between something that ultimately breaks down and returns to the life cycle vs. something semi-permanent, I'd choose the compostable material. As an aside, insects have been predicted to become a major nutrition resource in the future (high protein, vitamins, etc). So what do you suggest I, or people, do? I guess I could just keep the cloth plain...

Edit: After reading the article, it sounds like they need to plant trees to harvest the lac. I guess in my mind the battle to be green needs to be prioritized. Cows, for example, is the #1 carbon producer in the world, over transportation, so I eat little to no beef. I try to stay away from synthetics. Try to live simply and recycle. I don't tend to bother myself with "green" tire patches (recent thread) and probably will sleep ok knowing about shellac production...unless you can convince me otherwise (and I love to be convinced!)

20,000 tonnes annually so 20M kg, which is 6X10^12 insect lives lost annually. 25% of bugs remain in shellac so we eat it when we take pills or eat candy. But then again we also ingest a whole bunch of insects just by breathing (during sleep, riding our bikes, etc) haha. Oye*

You know the insects are dead, right?
Because the insects and trees are valuable to the many small villages in India that produce the raw shellac, they nurture them.
They, the insects, trees, and villagers would most likely be extinct if not for their monetary value.

not to derail the thread entirely, but you should read the positive effects of grass-fed/pastured beef if you are concerned about being green. not only is grass-fed beef one of the healthiest things to eat, it is also good for the environment.

Well I'm a bit skeptical about this comment, in the big picture sense that is. Foremost, it's outrageously expensive and makes up maybe a tiny tiny fraction of the beef industry, which I would rather not support. I do not deny that it is fantastic, Kobe beef for one is off the charts delicious. Actually it seems that whenever you have wild or well farmed animals, they are both nutritious and delicious. The problem is with industrial farming and overconsumption in most cases, and the ensuing personal and societal costs that follow. And I don't think I would be helping anything by increasing my consumption of grass-fed beef, and I certainly don't think the world would be better without D. Newton's guitars, and the music created by them. I rather just keep things simple, which in this case is just eat less beef... and just use a little bit of shellac... =P

To be green in my mind, is to see the big picture and not sweat the small stuff.

Try a little & let us know. That 30% water generally has a huge negative effect on the solvency power of the alcohol.

Ugh I'm getting a headache. =P Rootboy is sending me a small bag of flakes so it's sort of a one shot deal... so I might just suck it up and get denatured alcohol, which from what I read is about 90% ethyl alcohol and 10% "other stuff". Since I'm not burning it in a stove, I think people's concerns about impurities don't apply here? But laziness sometimes triumphs... Either way I will let people know and take before and after pics (not sure what color I will end up with, letting fate decide) on this thread. =)

At least here, you can buy a small bottle of ethyl alcohol, a quart or maybe less, at the pharmacy for a couple of bucks.

Is there a way I can buy shellac that has a higher kill rate than 30k insects/kg? Because that really just turns me on. Maybe there is a way of making it from kittens too.

First thing I thought of was furry handlebars =7 Ok off to the pharmacy...

You're welcome to come and scrape the bugs off my car's front number plate and headlamps if you want - must be more than 30k of the little critters pasted on there!

Maybe you could use a squirrel.

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-2...0/squirrel.jpg

Bug excretions. Tree resins. Condensed dinosaurs. It's a tough choice.

If you really want to do some bugs you should wrap your bars in silk tape, then shellac it.
I think the shellac feels better than varnish to the fingers. Kind of hard to quantify that one. I used to use it as a primer when I was a painter (the artist kind).
That denatured alcohol is hard stuff to beat. I'm not sure what the environmental consequences are but I know it gives me a screaming headache. Still, it's better than anything other than virgin acetone (which is getting pretty hard to find).

I'll jump in here and say that I totally agree. I like the feel of cotton wrap that has been coated with shellac. I also like that maintenance is pretty easy: every six months to a year add another coat or two and it will literally last forever, and look great the entire time. Pictured below are some rando bars I road the heck out of. To illustrate my point, in the time between wrapping the rando bars and the time when the photo was made I had completely worn through the red color on handlebars wrapped with contemporary tape.

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4113/...00729d59_z.jpg

LOL did you find that on regretsy.com? =) Where da heck do you get silk tape? Sounds nice. And azorch, that is a nice light! I wish I can find something like that, but battery powered.

I made up the bit about silk tape.

I bet hemp tape would be nice actually.

Like I said early, I mad emy own wrapping with some canvas from the fabric store, but I might see if anything else looks interesting and experiment with that...I'll post some pictures when I am done (this week maybe? fabrics store was closed today.)

How about cleaning any of these finishes off the handlebars later? Either if you decide you don't like coated bar tape or you just want to clean the bar prior to the next tape, what will clean dried shellac, or polyurethane, or whatever? I would think acetone, but has anyone successfully done this with alloy bars, and not had a bunch of scratches? I'm just looking at coating twine.

The trick is to do it so that you get very little on the bars. With cotton tape, and two or three light coats, done carefully, you hardly get any on the bars, in my experience. Tape peels off leaving a fairly clean surface. Just wipe it down to get the light residue off. I do the final clean up with lacquer thinner, as I remember. Denatured alcohol won't cut dried shellac, at least, very quickly. It will dissolve it, eventually, but I use something that's quicker. No, I don't like working with VOC's either, but I'm a realist. If a person has a thing against the shellac trade and its processes, or the volatile organic chemical thing, the answer is fairly simple. Don't coat your cotton tape with anything. I like it both ways. Coated and un-coated.

Yeah but where's the bug massacre in that?

Oh, the humanity! Save the bugs!

Let's all go out and throw mosquito blood on people wearing silk shirts too!

There's a process where wild silk can be harvested without killing (Tussah) the worm, fyi, hehe. =P Can't wait to see the pictures!